YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday with a slick, polished and confident display that has become the hallmark of its annual Brandcast event, but scratch beneath the shine, and buyers had a mixed feeling about the substance of what was on display.
The show was heavy on big claims about YouTube’s effectiveness versus TV and social media, notably endorsed by the likes of marketing consultant Rob Brittain, brand consultant and professor Mark Ritson and Analytics Partners MD Paul Sinkinson.
There was also a concerted push about the power of creators on YouTube, with America’s Pierson and former Aussie Olympic diver Sam Fricker on display.
But the one hour long presentation was light on details about some of its major announcements. YouTube head Caroline Oates did a great job of rattling through at least half a dozen advertising innovations just under 10 minutes.
Its key advertising announcements include:
- Immersive Masthead on CTV: A new product that provides an edge-to-edge creative canvas on the YouTube homepage to capture maximum attention.
- 60-Second Non-Skippable Format: Coming soon to YouTube Select, this format offers brands the space for deeper storytelling in a premium, lean-back viewing environment.
- Shoppable CTV: This tool closes the loop between big-screen impact and action, allowing audiences to shop directly on their TV or send product information to their phone.
- Cultural Moments Sponsorships: Brands can own key cultural moments, like the Met Gala, to ensure they show up when it matters most to their audience.
- Peak Points: An AI-powered tool uses microsignals to deliver an ad when a viewer is most emotionally receptive to it, at the ‘peak’ of an experience.
- Attributed Brand Searches: A new measurement solution that directly links YouTube video ad views to brand searches on Google.
Who isn’t on YouTube?
There were plenty of big numbers thrown about, as is customary at most upfront events, but particularly Brandcast.
Apparently 20.1 million Aussie adults used YouTube in 2025. That’s quite an impressive number when Australia’s adult population is only 20.9 million and 1.15 million are 80 years and older.
And the average adult spends an average of 87 minutes per day on the platform. YouTube also said that while 60-second ads perform better than 6-seconds ads on the platform, but both perform rather well.
YouTube’s reach has never been in doubt—even if we are to believe 96 per cent of adults use the platform. But this year’s Brandcast was focused on effectiveness, and landed its message well.
“YouTube’s got this unique position in that it gives you a really good short term sales result, but once you add on that long term brand building impact that it’s got becomes the number one channel for ROI that we measure in Australia, that efficiency and effectiveness is driven by numerous touch points and really brief exposures,” Sinkinson said in a pre-recorded interview.
“So how do you leverage that fleeting attention? Well, it’s heavy branding. It’s contextual targeting and contextual relevance. On their own, they might look small and little, but you put it together, it’s a tremendous impact.”
Sinkinson points out that YouTube plays well with longer form content watched on TV boxes and shorts on his mobile phone, “reinforcing brand structures and memory structures that have been built by the longer form.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily just about channels. It’s also, you know, the device that it’s put on,” he said, before comparing channels.
“If we see YouTube on CTV, for instance, it’s 30 per cent higher ROI. It’s already a pretty high ROI, but it goes up to 250 per cent than the likes of TV from a linear perspective. So definitely the device has a really big impact, and we see everything perform pretty well on it. But definitely there’s still a performance gap between YouTube and everything else sitting there.”
Brittain, who was commissioned by Google to look at the role of YouTube videos in the effectiveness of 550 campaigns from the Australian Effie Awards, was equally glowing.
“What we could see clearly was that when 25 per cent of social spend was reallocated to online video, the campaigns became, on average, 30 per cent more effective. Then we did the same exercise again, and we looked at higher spending campaigns, and what we saw there was that when online video wasn’t in the mix, effectiveness declined by about 30 per cent. This proves that over investment in a single channel like TV, or an under investment in online video, can actually be detrimental to overall effectiveness.
“With YouTube, you’re paying for business results. We see from the Effies analysis that some advertisers fall into the trap of chasing low cost impressions. In doing so, what they don’t realise is they’re giving away more than they gain in effectiveness. While a lower CPM on channels like social might seem appealing, it often signals a broad and less engaged audience that’s not as effective in driving your marketing objectives.”
Some media buyers were perplexed by the message. One senior media strategist, who spoke to B&T under the condition of anonymity, disagreed that YouTube is inherently more effective than TV and questioned how it can compare its effectiveness when the way it is consumed and measured is vastly different to TV.
“If they really want to take on TV, sign up to OzTAM and give us something to compare apples with apples,” the strategist said.
“YouTube is already an important channel on most media plans, it’s good they are trying to prove effectiveness, but it’s not an either/or. Most campaigns are amplified by working across multiple channels in unison rather than a single one in isolation.”
UM senior digital director Laura Prieto said that YouTube’s focus on effectiveness and driving business outcomes is the right play, but comparing it in isolation with other channels is the wrong game.
“Effectiveness really needs to be looked at at a holistic level, not just on one platform, not just on one channel,” she said. “We see this through marketing mix modelling, full funnel models, where it’s not one channel, one platform doing the entire job, but it’s the synergies that you see between those channels.”
“YouTube is really all about who your audience is as a brand, who is your prospect customer or existing customer. If what you’re trying to do is build more customer lifetime value when it comes to the mid and lower funnel, it’s effective. They have tech and AI tools to help brands find the right audience to achieve your conversion. But higher up in the funnel, I think it’s more about who the audience is for the brand.
Prieto explained that brands that have to be selective about the audiences they want to reach higher up in the funnel, would not find YouTube as effective as the premium inventory on TV, BVOD or SVODs.
Good overall, but skipped a beat
Starcom chief operating officer Louise Romeo enjoyed YouTube’s 20th anniversary bash.
“Brandcast has delivered another polished and very iconic, but impactful event,” she told B&T ahead of Kita Alexander’s headline performance in the after party.
“Reflecting on their 20 year history really shows how far they’ve come as a platform. This year they were very clear on what their point of difference was and where their future state of the business is going, especially in terms of where they’re going to drive growth, which is really through culture and creators.
“They talked a lot about defining generations through those real moments and authentic voices, and that’s where the content and the creators are going to help drive brands drive that forward.”
Romeo found YouTube’s new shoppable CTV ad format and peak points, which inserts ads just after peak emotional points of content.
Omnicom Media Group’s chief investment officer Marelle Salib told B&T she enjoyed the event but felt that it missed a few important questions.
“I think everything that we saw today is nothing new and nothing everyone didn’t know. Consumers expect to see creative fit for channel, and when they are on YouTube, they expect to see creators promoting brands,” she said.
“What was missing is there were limited ‘best in class’ Australian examples. For example, how is YouTube working with agencies, both media and creative, as well as clients, to leverage their platform to its full potential? How are they helping clients simplify the complexity, and that’s what we’re missing. YouTube is great. The creators are great. They’ve got all the right ingredients. It just felt a bit like the cake is undercooked to leverage the platform to its full potential.”
‘Because you’re worth it’
One of the brand case studies that shone on the night was L’Oreal’s impressive work in partnership with YouTube.
Chief marketing officer Georgia Hack—a two-time B&T CMO Power List-er, as pointed out on the night—explained how L’Oreal partnered with YouTube on a Maybelline campaign to raise awareness about abusive gaming behaviour to women, and a separate campaign to connect with men on game three of the NRL season “a very important game”. Both campaigns produced outstanding results.
She said YouTube creators allow L’Oreal to target and effectively reach specific audiences more effectively than brand ads on the platform.
“Don’t underestimate the power of YouTube to kind of build your brand and connect into multiple different audiences on the platform, connecting to culture,” she said. “The other piece is around creative effectiveness. Test what works, making sure that you think about user generated content versus branded assets and using that data to really build your brand.”
WPP Media chief creator officer Shivani Maharaj, who has worked with L’Oreal and Hack, told B&T that she was pleased by Brandcast’s focus on creators and the effectiveness of short and long form content.
“Advertisers are more inclined to want six second ads or 30 seconds, so seeing some of that research around the effectiveness of 60 seconds and long-form content was good,” she said.
“The principle of the rules that work for advertising are not the same rules as what works for content. Good content is good content, whether it’s six seconds or 20 minutes, as we’ve seen. So I think that resonated well. This is the year of the creator; we’re seeing huge fundamental changes happening globally.
“Everyone thinks about brand advertising, brand products, all of that sort of stuff, and not testing creator or UGC assets in correlation to brand. That is a really interesting space that I think more advertisers should be doing and L’Oreal is at the forefront of that.”
Maharaj didn’t agree with the notion that brands are under-indexing their ad spend with YouTube.
A ‘Goldilocks’ channel
Wavemaker’s managing director of product and transformation, Kristy Kinzett, also liked messaging around the effectiveness of long form assets and creator content.
She believes that the message that brands have not invested enough in YouTube aligned with the experience she has had with clients, including L’Oreal.
“I can’t speak for other brands, but I know when I first started working on some of the brands I’m on now, I felt that there was a lot more room to grow,” she said.
“Georgia Hack spoke about how they’ve got these golden rules, which talk to sufficiency, but they are an entry point (for investment). What we’ve found with a lot of our clients is when we invest beyond entry point sufficiency, and more optimal sufficiency, that’s what we see, like, much stronger results.”
At a time when marketers are often focused on the short term, Kinzett said that YouTube doubling down on brand building was positive.
She believes YouTube has plenty of scope to attract more media investment, but “where that money comes from, is probably the question”.
Where the presentation was lacking, she added, is how to get the best out of its connected TV messaging. YouTube’s global CEO Neil Mohan has proclaimed that YouTube is “the new television”, but media buyers are not so convinced, not least of all because it measures success very differently and is often consumed in a different way with more snackable short form content.
“I believe YouTube is a bit like a Goldilocks channel and they can do it all but with the right creative and right ingredients in the mix,” Kinzett added.
“I feel like there’s still a lot of research needed that digs deeper into their CTV piece. For example, are they more effective with traditional TV ads on YouTube or shorter form entertaining content. They could be a competitor to TV but I’d like to see more robust research to prove it.”
The final word
The overriding sentiment of this year’s Brandcast is ‘seen most of it before and would like more details…but great party’.
The focus on creators and effectiveness—albeit with some eyebrow-raising claims—landed, but more details about the major announcements and what it means for advertisers and agency partners was missing. So, too, was a lack of Australian creators, aside from the excellent host Sam Fricker.
One agency lead questioned why Australia was not better represented. YouTube said it has more than 500 creator accounts with more than 1 million subscribers, but couldn’t find Aussie talent to take centre stage on its night of nights.
OMG’s Salib said that YouTube now needs to work more closely with agency partners and clients to help them get the most out of the platform.
“The industry is at a tipping point, and the 2026 upfronts aren’t just another calendar moment, they’re a defining one. We’re moving beyond the sea of sameness and shifting focus from investment growth to the kind of creativity that makes consumers stickier, to brands,” she said.
“That’s why we’re carefully considering which media partners will be on our short list and who are the right ones for our business and our clients. Those who can truly collaborate and co-engineer ideas that hit hard and leave a lasting impression will win.”
That may well be YouTube, but for now, the industry will turn its attention to the TV giants, who are likely to have their own say about big audience claims, effectiveness and where video budgets should head.
